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Several blocks of text:
IT was nearly midnight on the eve of St. Thomas's, the
shortest day in the year. A desolating wind wandered
from the north over the hill whereon Oak had watched
the yellow waggon and its occupant in the sunshine of
a few days earlier.
  Norcombe Hill -- not far from lonely Toller-Down
 -- was one of the spots which suggest to a passer-by
that he is in the presence of a shape approaching the
indestructible as nearly as any to be found on earth.
It was a featureless convexity of chalk and soil -- an
ordinary specimen of those smoothly-outlined protuber+
ances of the globe which may remain undisturbed on
some great day of confusion, when far grander heights
and dizzy granite precipices topple down.
The hill was covered on its northern side by an
ancient and decaying plantation of beeches, whose
upper verge formed a line over the crest, fringing its
arched curve against the sky, like a mane. To-night
these trees sheltered the southern slope from the keenest
blasts, which smote the wood and floundered through
it with a sound as of grumbling, or gushed over its
crowning boughs in a weakened moan. The dry leaves
in the ditch simmered and boiled in the same breezes,
a tongue of air occasionally ferreting out a few, and
sending them spinning across the grass. A group or
two of the latest in date amongst the dead multitude
had remained till this very mid-winter time on the twigs
which bore them and in falling rattled against the trunks
with smart taps:
Betwenne this half-wooded, half naked hill, and the
vague still horizon that its summit indistinctly com+
manded, was a mysterious sheet of fathomless shade
 -- the sounds from which suggested that what it con+
cealed bore some reduced resemblance to features here.
The thin grasses, more or less coating the hill, were
touched by the wind in breezes of differing powers, and
almost of differing natures -- one rubbing the blades
heavily, another raking them piercingly, another brushing
them like a soft broom. The instinctive act of human+
kind was to stand and listen, and learn how the trees
to each other in the regular antiphonies of a cathedral
choir; how hedges and other shapes to leeward them
caught the note, lowering it to the tenderest sob; and
how the hurrying gust then plunged into the south, to
be heard no more.
The sky was clear -- remarkably clear -- and the
twinkling of all the stars seemed to be but throbs of
one body, timed by a common pulse. The North Star
was directly in the wind's eye, and since evening the
Bear had swung round it outwardly to the east, till he
was now at a right angle with the meridian. A
difference of colour in the stars -- oftener read of than
seen in England-was really perceptible here. The
sovereign brilliancy of Sirius pierced the eye with a steely
glitter, the star called Capella was yellow, Aldebaran and
Betelgueux shone with a fiery red.
To persons standing alone on a hill during a clear
midnight such as this, the roll of the world eastward is
almost a palpable movement. The sensation may be
caused by the panoramic glide of the stars past earthly
objects, which is perceptible in a few minutes of still+
ness, or by the better outlook upon space that a hill
affords, or by the wind, or by the solitude ; but whatever
be its origin, the impression of riding along is vivid and
abiding. The poetry of motion is a phrase much in
use, and to enjoy the epic form of that gratification it
is necessary to stand on a hill at a small hour of the
night, and, having first expanded with a sense of differ+
ence from the mass of civilised mankind, who are
dreamwrapt and disregardful of all such proceedings at
this time, long and quietly watch your stately progress
through the stars. After such a nocturnal reconnoitre
it is hard to get back to earth, and to believe that the
consciousness of such majestic speeding is derived from
a tiny human frame.
Suddenly an unexpected series of sounds began to
be heard
in this place up against the sky. They had a
clearness which was to be found nowhere in the wind,
and a sequence which was to be found nowhere in
nature. They were the notes of Farmer Oak's flute.
The tune was not floating unhindered into the open
air : it seemed muffled in some way, and was altogether
too curtailed in power to spread high or wide. It came
from the direction of a small dark object under the
plantation hedge -- a shepherd's hut -- now presenting
an outline to which an uninitiated person might have
been puzzled to attach either meaning or use.
The image as a whole was that of a small Noah's
Ark on a small Ararat, allowing the traditionary outlines
and general form of the Ark which are followed by toy+
makers -- and by these means are established in men's
imaginations among their firmest, because earliest im+
pressions -- to pass as an approximate pattern. The
hut stood on little wheels, which raised its floor about a
foot from the ground. Such shepherds' huts are dragged
into the fields when the lambing season comes on, to
shelter the shepherd in his- enforced nightly attendance.
It was only latterly that people had begun to call
Gabriel !Farmer' Oak. During the twelvemonth pre+
ceding this time he had been enabled by sustained
efforts of industry and chronic good spirits to lease the
small shepp farm of which Norcombe Hill was a portion,
and stock it with two hundred sheep. Previously he
had been a bailiff for a short time, and earlier still a
shepherd only, having from his childhood assisted his
father in tending the floeks of large proprietors, till old
Gabriel sank to rest.
This venture, unaided and alone, into the paths of
farming as master and not as man, with an advance of
sheep not yet paid for, was a critical juncture with
Gabriel Oak, and he recognised his position clearly.
The first movement in his new progress was the lambing
of his ewes, and sheep having been his speciality from
his "youth, he wisely refrained from deputing -- the task
of tending them at this season to a hireling or a novice.
The wind continued to beat-about the corners of the
hut, but the flute-playing ceased. A rectangular space
of light
appeared in the side of the hut, and in the
opening the outline of Farmer Oak's figure. He carried
a lantern in his hand, and closing the door behind him,
came forward and busied himself about this nook of the
field for nearly twenty minutes, the lantern light appear+
ing and disappearing here and there, and brightening
him or darkening him as he stood before or behind it.
Oak's motions, though they had a quiet-energy, were
slow, and their deliberateness accorded well with his
occupation. Fitness being the basis of beauty, nobody
could-have denied that his steady swings and turns"
in and- about the flock had elements of grace, Yet,
although if occasion demanded he could do or think a
thing with as mercurial a dash as can the men of towns
who are more to the manner born, his special power,
morally, physically, and mentally, was static, owing
little or nothing to momentum as a rule.
A close examination of the ground hereabout, even
by the wan starlight only, revealed how a portion of
what would have been casually called a wild slope had
been appropriated by Farmer Oak for his great purpose
this winter. Detached hurdles thatched with straw
were stuck into the ground at various scattered points,
amid and under which the whitish forms of his meek
ewes moved and rustled. The ring of the sheep-bell,
which had been silent during his absence, recommenced,
in tones that had more mellowness than clearness, owing
to an increasing growth of surrounding wool. This
continued till Oak withdrew again from the flock. He
 --  returned to the hut, bringing in his arms a new-born
lamb, consisting of four legs large enough for a full+
grown sheep, united by a seemingly inconsiderable mem+
brane about half the substance of the legs collectively,
which constituted the animal's entire body just at present.
The little speck of life he placed on a wisp of hay
before the small stove, where a can of milk was simmer+
ing. Oak extinguished the lantern by blowing into it
and then pinching the snuff, the cot being lighted
by a candle suspended by a twisted wire. A rather
hard couch, formed of a few corn sacks thrown carelessly
down, covered half the floor of this little
habitation, and
here the young man stretched himself along, loosened
his woollen cravat, and closed his eyes. In about the
time a person unaccustomed to bodily labour would have
decided upon which side to lie, Farmer Oak was asleep.
The inside of the hut, as it now presented itself, was
cosy and alluring, and the scarlet handful of fire in
addition to the candle, reflecting its own genial colour
upon whatever it could reach, flung associations of
enjoyment even over utensils and tools. In the corner
stood the sheep-crook, and along a shelf at one side
were ranged bottles and canisters of the simple prepara+
tions pertaining to ovine surgery and physic; spirits of
wine, turpentine, tar, magnesia, ginger, and castor-oil
being the chief. On a triangular shelf across the corner
stood bread, bacon, cheese, and a cup for ale or cider,
which was supplied from a flagon beneath. Beside the
provisions lay the flute whose notes had lately been
called forth by the lonely watcher to beguile a tedious
hour. The house was ventilated by two round holes,
like the lights of a ship's cabin, with wood slides+
The lamb, revived by the warmth' began to bleat'
instant meaning, as expected sounds will. Passing
from the profoundest sleep to the most alert wakefulness
with the same ease that had accompanied the reverse
operation, he looked at his watch, found that the hour+
hand had shifted again, put on his hat, took the lamb
in his arms, and carried it into the darkness. After
placing the little creature with its mother, he stood and
carefully examined the sky, to ascertain the time of
night from the altitudes of the stars.
The Dog-star and Aldebaran, pointing to the restless
Pleiades, were half-way up the Southern sky, and between
them hung Orion, which gorgeous constellation never
burnt more vividly than now, as it soared forth above
the rim of the landscape. Castor and Pollux will
the north-west; far away through the plantation Vega
and Cassiopeia's chair stood daintily poised on the
uppermost boughs.
"One o'clock,' said Gabriel.
Being a man not without a frequent consciousness
that there was some charm in this life he led, he stood
still after looking at the sky as a useful instrument, and
regarded it in an appreciative spirit, as a work of art
superlatively beautiful. For a moment he seemed
impressed with the speaking loneliness of the scene, or
rather with the complete abstraction from all its compass
of the sights and sounds of man. Human shapes,interferences,
troubles, and joys were all as if they were not, and there
seemed to be on the shaded hemisphere of the globe no sentient being
save himself; he could fancy them all gone round to the sunny side.
  Occupied this, with eyes stretched afar, Oak gradually per+
ceived that what he had previously taken to be a star low
down behind the outskirts of the plantation was in reality no
such thing. It was an artificial light, almost close at hand.
 To find themselves utterly alone at night where company
is desirable and expected makes some people fearful; but a
case more trying by far to the nerves is to discover some
mysterious companionship when intuition, sensation, memory,
analogy, testimony, probability, induction -- every kind of
evidence in the logician's list -- have united to persuade con+
sciousness that it is quite in isolation.
 Farmer Oak went towards the plantation and pushed
through its lower boughs to the windy side. A dim mass under
the slope reminded him that a shed occupied a place here,
the site being a cutting into the slope of the hill, so that at
its back part the roof was almost level with the ground. In
front it was formed of board nailed to posts and covered with
tar as apreservative. Through crevices in the roof and side
spread streaks and spots of light, a combination of which made
the radiance that had attracted him. Oak stepped up behind,
where,leaning down upon the roof and putting his eye close
to a hole, he could see into the interior clearly.
 The place contained two women and two cows. By the side
of the latter a steaming bran-mash stood in a bucket. One
of the women was past middle age. Her companion was ap+
parently young and graceful; he could form no decided opinion
upon her looks, her position being almost beneath his eye, so
that he saw her in a bird's-eye view, as Milton's Satan first saw
Paradise. She wore no bonnet or het, but had enveloped her+
self in a large cloak, which was carelessly flung over her head
as a covering.
 "There, now we'll go home," said the elder of the two, resting
 her knuckles upon her hips, and looking at their goings-on as
a whole. "I do hope Daisy will fetch round again now. I have
never been more frightened in my life, but I don't mind break+
ing my rest if she recovers."
 The young woman, whose eyelids were apparently inclined
to fall together on the smallest provocation of silence,yawned
in sympathy.
 "I wish we were rich enough to pay a man to do these
things," she said.
 "As we are not, we must do them ourselves," said the other;
"for you must help me if you stay."
"Well, my hat is gone, however," continued the younger. "It
went over the hedge, I think. The idea of such a slight wind
catching it."
 The cow standing erect was of the Devon breed, and was
encased in a tight warm hide of rich Indian red, as absolutely
uniform from eyes to tail as if the animal had been dipped in
a dye of that colour, her long back being mathematically level.
The other was spotted,grey and white. Beside her Oak now
noticed a little calf about a day old, looking idiotically at
the two women, which showed that it had not long been
accustomed to the phenomenon of eyesight, and often turn+
ing to the lantern, which it apparently mistook for the moon.
inherited instinct having as yet had little time for correction
by experience. Between the sheep and the cows Lucina had
been busy on Norcombe hill lately.
 "I think we had better send for some oatmeal," said the
"Yes, aunt; and I'll ride over for it as soon as it is
light. '
" But there's no side-saddle.'
"I can ride on the other : trust me.'
Oak, upon hearing these remarks, became more
curious to observe her features, but this prospect being
denied him by the hooding efect of the cloak, and by his
aerial position, he felt himself drawing upon his fancy
for their details. In making even horizontal and clear
inspections we colour and mould according to the warts
within us whatever our eyes bring in. Had Gabriel
been able from the first to get a distinct view of her +
countenance, his estimate of it as very handsome or
slightly so would have been as his soul required a
divinity at the moment or was ready supplied with one.
Having for some time known the want of a satisfactory
form to fill an increasing void within him, his position
moreover affording the widest scope for his fancy, he
painted her a beauty.
By one of those whimsical coincidences in which
Nature, like a busy mother, seems to spare a moment
from her unremitting labours to turn and make her
children smile, the girl now dropped the cloak, and
forth tumbled ropes of black hair over a red jacket.
Oak knew her instantly as the heroine of the yellow
waggon, myrtles, and looking-glass : prosily, as the
woman who owed him twopence.
They placed the calf beside its mother again, took
up the lantern, and went out, the light sinking down
the hill till it was no more than a nebula. Gabriel
Oak returned to his flock.
A GIRL ON HORSEBACK -- CONVERSATION
THE sluggish day began to break. Even its position
terrestrially is one of the elements of a new interest,
and for no particular reason save that the incident of
the night had occurred there, Oak went again into
the plantation. Lingering and musing here, he heard
the steps of a horse at the foot of the hill, and soon
there appeared in view an auburn pony with a girl on
its back, ascending by the path leading past the cattle+
shed. She was the young woman of the night before.
Gabriel instantly thought of the hat she had mentioned
as having lost in the wind; possibly she had come to
look for it. He hastily scanned the ditch and after
walking about ten yards along it, found the hat among the
leaves. Gabriel took it in his hand and returned to his
hut. Here he ensconced himself, and peeped through
the loophole in the direction of the riders approach.
She came up and looked around -- then on the other
side of the hedge. Gabriel was about to advance and
restore the missing article when an unexpected per+
formance induced him to suspend the action for the
present. The path, after passing the cowshed, bisected
the plantation. It was not a bridle-path -- merely a
pedestrian's track, and the boughs spread horizontally
at a height not greater than seven feet above the ground,
which made it impossible to ride erect beneath them.
The girl, who wore no riding-habit, looked around for
a moment, as if to assure herself that all humanity was
out of view, then dexterously dropped backwards flat
upon the pony's back, her head over its tail, her feet
against its shoulders, and her eyes to the sky. The
rapidity of her glide into this position was that of a
kingfisher -- its noiselessness that of a hawk. Gabriel's
eyes had scarcely been able to follow her. The tall lank
pony seemed used to such doings, and ambled
along unconcerned. Thus she passed under the level boughs.
The performer seemed quite at home anywhere
between a horse's head and its tail, and the necessity
for this abnormal attitude having ceased with the
passage of the plantation, she began to adopt another,
even more obviously convenient than the first. She had
no side-saddle, and it was very apparent that a firm
seat upon the smooth leather beneath her was un+
attainable sideways. Springing to her accustomed
perpendicular like a bowed sapling, and satisfying her,
self that nobody was in sight, she seated herself in the
manner demanded by the saddle, though hardly expected
of the woman, and trotted off in the direction of Tewnell
Mill.
Oak was amused, perhaps a little astonished, and
hanging up the hat in his hut, went again among his
ewes. An hour passed, the girl returned, properly
seated now, with a bag of bran in front of her. On
nearing the cattle-shed she was met by a boy bringing
a milking-pail, who held the reins of the pony whilst
she slid off. The boy led away the horse, leaving the
pail with the young woman.
Soon soft spirts alternating with loud spirts came
in regular succession from within the shed, the obvious
sounds of a person milking a cow. Gabriel took the
lost hat in his hand, and waited beside the path she
would follow in leaving the hill.
She came, the pail in one hand, hanging against her
knee. The left arm was extended as a balance, enough
of it being shown bare to make Oak wish that the event
ha happened in the summer, when the whole would
have been revealed. There was a bright air and manner
about her now, by which she seemed to imply that the
desirability of her existence could not be questioned;
and this rather saucy assumption failed in being offensive,
because a beholder felt it to be, upon the whole, true.
Like exceptional emphasis in the tone of a genius, that
which would have made mediocrity ridiculous was an
addition to recognised power. It was with some
surprise that she saw Gabriel's face rising like the
moon behind the hedge.
The adjustment of the farmer's hazy conceptions of
her
charms to the portrait of herself she now presented
him with was less a diminuition than a difference. The
starting-point selected by the judgment was. her height
She seemed tall, but the pail was a small one, and the
hedge diminutive; hence, making allowance for error
by comparison with these, she could have been not
above the height to be chosen by women as best. All
features of consequence were severe and regular. It
may have been observed by persons who go about the
shires with eyes for beauty, that in Englishwoman a
classically-formed face is seldom found to be united
with a figure of the same pattern, the highly-finished
features being generally too large for the remainder of
the frame ; that a graceful and proportionate figure of
eight heads usually goes off into random facial curves.
Without throwing a Nymphean tissue over a milkmaid,
let it be said that here criticism checked itself as out
of place, and looked at her proportions with a long
consciousness of pleasure. From the contours of her
figure in its upper part, she must have had a beautiful
neek and shoulders ; but since her infancy nobody had
ever seen them. Had she been put into a low dress
she would have run and thrust her head into a bush.
Yet she was not a shy girl by any means; it was merely
her instinct to draw the line dividing the seen from the
unseen higher than they do it in towns.
That the girl's thoughts hovered about her face
and form as soon as she caught Oak's eyes conning the
same page was natural, and almost certain. The self+
consciousness shown would have been vanity if a little
more pronounced, dignity if a little less. Rays of male
vision seem to have a tickling effect upon virgin faces
in rural districts ; she brushed hers with her hand, as if
Gabriel had been irritating its pink surface by actual
touch, and the free air of her previous movements was
reduced at the same time to a chastened phase of
itself. Yet it was the man who blushed, the maid not
at all.
" I found a hat,' said Oak.
" It is mine,' said she, and, from a sense of proportion,
kept down to a small smile an inclination to laugh dis+
tinctly : "it flew away last night.'
" One o'clock this morning ? '
" Well -- it was.' She was surprised. " How did you
know ? ' she said.
" I was here.'
" You are Farmer Oak, are you not ? '
" That or thereabouts. I'm lately come to this place.'
" A large farm ? ' she inquired, casting her eyes round,
and swinging back her hair, which was black in the
shaded hollows of its mass; but it being now an hour
past sunrise, the rays touched its prominent curves with
a colour of their own.
" No ; not large. About a hundred.' (In speaking
of farms the word "acres ' is omitted by the natives, by
analogy to such old expressions as "a stag of ten.')
' "I wanted my hat this morning,' she went on.
had to ride to Tewnell Mill.'
"Yes you had.'
"How do you know?'
"I saw you!
"Where?' she inquired, a misgiving bringing every
muscle of her lineaments and frame to a standstill.
"Here-going through the plantation, and all down
the hill,' said Farmer Oak, with an aspect excessively
knowing with regard to some matter in his mind, as he
gazed at a remote point in the direction named, and then
turned back to meet his colloquist's eyes.
A perception caused him to withdraw his own eyes
from hers as suddenly as if he had been caught in a
theft. Recollection of the strange antics she had
indulged in when passing through the trees, was suc+
ceeded in the girl by a nettled palpitation, and that' by
a hot face. It was a time to see a woman redden who
was not given to reddening s a rule; not a point in
the milkmaid but was of the deepest rose-colour. From
the Maiden's Blush, through all varieties of the Provence
down to the Crimson Tuscany, the countenance of Oak's
acquaintance quickly graduated ; whereupon he, in con+
siderateness, turned away his head.
The sympathetic man still looked the other way, and
wondered when she would recover coolness sufficient to
justify him in facing her again. He heard what seemed
to be the flitting of a
dead leaf upon the breeze, and
looked. She had gone away.
With an air between that of Tragedy and Comedy !
Gabriel returned to his work.
Five mornings and evenings passed. The young
woman came regularly to milk the healthy cow or to
attend to the sick one, but never allowed her vision to
stray in the direction of Oak's person. His want of
tact had deeply offended her -- not by seeing what he
could not help, but by letting her know that he had
seen it. For, as without law there is no sin, without
eyes there is no indecorum; and she appeared to feel
that Gabriel's espial had made her an indecorous woman
without her own connivance. It was food for great regret
with him; it was also a contretemps which touched into
life a latent heat he had experienced in that direction.
The acquaintanceship might, however, have ended in
a slow forgetting, but for an incident which occurred at
the end of the same week. One afternoon it began to
freeze, and the frost increased with evening, which drew
on like a stealthy tightening of bonds. It was a time
when in cottages the breath of the sleepers freezes to
the sheets; when round the drawing-room fire of a
thick-walled mansion the sitters' backs are cold, even
whilst their faces are all aglow. Many a small bird went
to bed supperless that night among the bare boughs.
As the milking-hour drew near, Oak kept his usual
watch upon the cowshed. At last he felt cold, and
shaking an extra quantity of bedding round the yeaning
ewes he entered the hut and heaped more fuel upon
the stove. The wind came in at the bottom of the door,
and to prevent it Oak laid a sack there and wheeled the
cot round a little more to the south. Then the wind
spouted in at a ventilating hole -- of which there was one
on each side of the hut.
Gabriel had always known that when the fire was
lighted and the door closed one of these must be kept
open -- that chosen being always on the side away from
the wind. Closing the slide to windward, he turned to
open the other; on second -- -thoughts the farmer con+
sidered that he would first sit down leaving both
closed for a minute or two, till the temperature of the
hut was a little raised. He sat down.
His head began to ache in an unwonted manner, and,
fancying himself weary by reason of the broken rests of
the preceding nights, Oak decided to get up, open the
slide, and then allow himself to fall asleep. He fell
asleep, however, without having performed the necessary
preliminary.
